Posts tagged with Bentley Historical Library

In 2020, the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship in Atlanta, Georgia reached out to the University of Michigan to contribute to the Sounding Spirit Digital Library (SSDL). They asked the Bentley Historical Library, the U-M Library, and the William L. Clements Library to contribute titles in our collections that would expand their digital collection. This post looks at the range of titles contributed, discusses the equipment used to digitize the titles, and analyses the ways that SSDL and U-M Library align and vary in their digitization efforts.

Digital Content & Collections (DCC) relies on content and subject experts to bring us new digital collections.From July 2018 to Jun 2019, our digital collections received 67.9 million views. During the pandemic, when there was an increased need for digital resources, usage of the digital collections jumped to 86.5 million views (July 2019-Jun 2020) and 89 million views (July 2020-June 2021). Thank you to the many people, too numerous to reasonably list here, who are involved not just in the creation of these digital collections but in the continued maintenance of these and hundreds of other digital collections that reach users around the world to advance research and provide access to materials.

Over the past year, Library Information Technology - specifically Digital Content & Collections, Digital Library Applications, and Design & Discovery - has been collaborating with the Bentley Historical Library to assess and update the interfaces for some of their digital collections. The results have improved usability, allowed us to document lessons learned that can be applied to the new digital platform that we are building for our digital collections, and forged deeper ties with a great ally, the Bentley Historical Library and its staff.